Yep, hate it.

In the day job net meetings with clients all over the world is very common but you will find that many people are very self conscious of the medium feeling that they are talking to a computer rather than a person even when they can see the other person.

Some people can take to it. Others (myself included) cannot as the body language on the screen is not real. Give me a one to one telephone conversation over a net meeting any day of the week.

The above said, assuming that both parties have the required equipment of the right quality, an appropriate bandwidth at both ends and an attitude that ignores the interface, it can work.

I would say though that you should not expect clients to have the level of equipment that you may have invested in (Try holding a serious meeting with someone with a poor quality integrated laptop camera and dodgy wifi signal! Ends up like max headroom has got a job as a war correspondent using a hand held satelite link during shelling (yep, I've tried holding a meeting like that).

Poor reception of the message at either end can have a detrimental rather than positive outcome so you really need to have all of your ducks in row before pushing that as a viable option to clients.

Of course, there are positive aspects to the medium. For example, with many of the net meetings I've had with guys doing work for me in India if they had been in the same room I would have been bouncing their heads off the desks but they have the safety of distance so in a way using this medium keeps me out of jail.

Sorry, when I said net meetings I didn't mean video. I don;t have a face for video myself.

But it could allow me to display their accounts, virtually point to thinks and talk through them. I do this by telephone right now, but spend so long directing them to the right bit, and even then not sure everyone sees it. It's a bit like mishearing someone, you can ask them to repeat it twice, then it starts to get a bit rude and you just need to go with what you think you heard.

Kris

You could use something like team-viewer (costs) to share screens. Webex free version, that will allow 3 participants with document view  but not allow applications to run (i.e. you could not run sage etc to show others in the webconf), the paid version seems expensive for just a few clients. Skype will also allow screen share, though you should be careful for security reasons.

However, this will eventually be the way to go as tech improves and engulf's our lives!

Hi,

I have offered Skype support for my students for over a year now and i can probably count one hand the number of video calls i have had.  Everyone just uses the audio and the chat function.  Another really useful thing i use it for is sharing a screen so i can show a student where on Sage you need to go etc.

This last year we have been working a bit closer with awarding bodies and spend ages travelling from deepest darkest North Lincolnshire to civilisation.  And when there are two or three of us, the man hours lost in travelling were mounting up, so all the equipment we bought for web meetings soon paid for themselves.

I think most people aren't to adverse to it.

Nick